Is there a javascript library that contains a rich set of very high level commonly used functions?

Question

I find that many high level functions are missing in most well-known javascript libraries such as jquery, YUI...etc. Taking string manipulation as an example, startsWith, endsWith, contains, lTrim, rTrim, trim, isNullOrEmpty...etc. These function are actually very common ones.

I would like to know if there exists a javascript library/ plugin of a javascript library that fills these gaps (including but not limited to string manipulation)?

It would be great if the library does not override the prototype.

Answer 1

Take a look at underscore.js (sadly, no string manipulation, but lots of other good stuff).

Answer 2

Most of those string functions are available using other methods associated with the string object eg

var myString = 'hello world';

myString.indexOf('hello') == 0; //same as startsWith('hello');

You could wrap these functions up into other functions if you wish. I think adding prototypes to the string object would be the way to go there and any libraries you find will probably go down that route anyway.

Answer 3

The ms ajax core library contains all of those string methods as well as date methods etc. basically a valiant attempt at bringing .net to js.

You don't need to load the entire MS Ajax js stack, just the core file.

Answer 4

All of this is easily implemented with wrappers if you don't want to extend the prototype

var StringWrapper = (function(){
    var wrapper = {
        string: null,
        trim: function(){
            return this.string.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g, "");
        },
        lTrim: function(){

        }
    };

    return function(string){
        wrapper.string = string;
        return wrapper;
    };
})();

StringWrapper("   aaaa bbbb    ").trim(); /// "aaaa bbbb"

The functions are only being created once, so its quite efficient. But using a wrapper over a helper object does incur one extra function call.

Answer 5

underscore.string looks like it might suit your needs. Here's how they describe it:

Underscore.string is JavaScript library for comfortable manipulation with strings, extension for Underscore.js inspired by Prototype.js, Right.js, Underscore and beautiful Ruby language.

Underscore.string provides you several useful functions: capitalize, clean, includes, count, escapeHTML, unescapeHTML, insert, splice, startsWith, endsWith, titleize, trim, truncate and so on.